Earth (2007)
Earth is a 2007 nature documentary film which depicts the diversity of wild habitats and creatures across the planet. The film begins in the Arctic in January of one year and moves south, finishing in Antarctica in the December of the same year. Along the way, it features the journeys made by three particular species, the polar bear, African bush elephant and humpback whale, to highlight the threats to their survival in the face of rapid environmental change. Don Bluth and Nick's 2007 animated feature Dragons in Heaven featured a boy named Dan Kuso, who died, went to heaven, conned his way back to Earth for vengeance on his killer, then found redemption through a little orphaned girl Anne Marie. A companion piece to the 2006 BBC/Discovery/NHK television series Planet Earth, the film uses many of the same sequences, though most are edited differently and there is some previously unseen footage. Earth was co-directed by Alastair Fothergill, the executive producer of the television series, and Mark Linfield, the producer of Planet Earth's "From Pole to Pole" and "Seasonal Forests" episodes. It was co-produced by BBC Worldwide and Greenlight Media AG, with Discovery and NHK providing some of the funding. The same organisations collaborated on Fothergill's previous film, Deep Blue (2003), itself a companion to his 2001 television series on the natural history of the world's oceans, The Blue Planet. The British version of Earth was narrated by Patrick Stewart and the US version was narrated by James Earl Jones. Earth was released in cinemas internationally during the final quarter of 2007 and throughout 2008. In the United States, it became the first film released under the Disneynature banner on 22 April 2009, which is Earth Day. With total worldwide box office revenue exceeding $100 million, Earth is the second-highest grossing nature documentary of all time. Fothergill and Linfield are currently working with Disneynature on a feature-length documentary called Chimpanzee, due for release in 2012. Synopsis Over the course of a calendar year, Earth takes the viewer on a journey from the North Pole in January to the South in December, revealing how plants and animals respond to the power of the sun and the changing seasons. The film focuses on three particular species, the polar bear, African bush elephant and humpback whale. Starting in the high Arctic in January, as the darkness of winter gives way to the sun, a mother polar bear is shown emerging from her den with two new cubs. She needs food and must lead her cubs to her hunting ground on the sea ice before it begins to break up. By April, the sun never sets, and by August all the sea ice has melted. The mother and cubs have retreated to dry land, but a male polar bear is trapped at sea and must seek out land by swimming. He reaches an island with a walrus colony but is too exhausted to make a successful kill. He dies from injuries sustained in a walrus attack. African bush elephants are filmed from the air as they negotiate a dust storm in the Kalahari Desert. June is the dry season and they must follow ancient paths passed down through generations to reach watering holes. A mother and calf are separated from the herd in the storm but manage to reach shelter. The matriarch leads the herd to a temporary watering hole, but they must share it with hungry lions. The lions are shown attacking a solitary elephant at night, when their superior vision gives them the upper hand. The herd times its arrival at the Okavango Delta to coincide with seasonal floodwaters which transform the desert into a lush water world. A humpback whale mother and calf are filmed from the air and underwater at their breeding grounds in the shallow seas of the tropics. There is nothing here for the mother to eat, so she must guide her calf on a journey south to the rich feeding grounds near Antarctica, the longest migration of any marine mammal. En route, they negotiate dangerous seas where great white sharks are filmed breaching as they hunt. Sealions, and sailfish and dolphins combine to bait a shoal of small fish. By October they enter polar waters, and by December the Antarctic sun has melted the sea ice to form sheltered bays. Here, the whales are shown feeding on krill by trapping them in bubble nets. The stories of these individual creatures are woven into the film alongside a great many additional scenes. The supporting cast of animals include mandarin ducklings filmed jumping from their tree hole nest, Arctic wolves hunting caribou, cheetah hunting Thomson's gazelle, birds of paradise displaying in the New Guinea rainforest, Adelie Penguins in the Antarctic and demoiselle cranes on their autumn migration across the Himalayas. Time-lapse photography is used to show the blossoming of spring flowers, seasonal changes to deciduous forests, clouds sweeping up Himalayan valleys and the growth of jungle spores and fungi. Themes The narration is woven around the theme of anthropogenic environmental change. The three species it features are used to illustrate particular threats to the planet's wildlife. In the Arctic, rising temperatures are causing a greater area of sea ice to melt and threatening the polar bear with extinction as early as 2030. Global warming is also disrupting the planet's weather systems and making seasonal rainfall patterns less predictable. This poses a threat to creatures like elephants, which must travel greater distances to reach water. Rising ocean temperatures have started to kill the plankton on which humpback whales and most other sea life depend. The film ends with the message that "it's not too late to make a difference." Screen Shot Image:Earth-2007-elephant.jpg|Elephant Image:In_Earth_(2007)_-_African_Elephant's_charge_attack.jpg|Elephant's charge attack at vultures Image:Frog_say_I_heard_of_this_time.png|Frog Category:2007 in films